The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences. Vol. XXXVII. Part B7. Beijing 2008 
(b) 
Figure 3. Original HSR and LSR images of Quickbird. (a) 
HSR image, (b) RGB false-colour composition 4, 3 and 2 of 
LSR (resampled at 0.7 m) 
RGB compositions of the fused images formed by three fusion 
methods are shown in Fig. 4. From original images and fusion 
results (Fig. 3, Fig. 4), the spectral characteristics of SFIM- 
fused or DWT-fused images is almost the same with original 
LSR images (Fig. 3(b), Fig. 4(a)-(b)), and that of MBT-fused 
images has slightly difference (Fig. 3(b), Fig. 4(c)). On the 
other hand, the improvement of spatial quality is obvious in all 
fused images. However, there are blurred phenomenon between 
different objects in both SFIM-fused and WT-fused images (Fig. 
4(a)-(b)), and the features in MBT-fused images are the same 
clear with HSR image (Fig. 4(c), Fig. 3(a)). 
Spectral quality 
Spatial quality 
SD 
ERGAS 
CC 
ERGAS 
MSI 
0.003 
0.626 
SFIM 
MS2 
MS3 
0.003 
0.003 
1.070 
0.718 
0.711 
82.535 
MS4 
0.001 
0.860 
MSI 
0.008 
0.591 
DWT 
MS2 
MS3 
0.009 
0.018 
4.260 
0.670 
0.645 
85.518 
MS4 
0.001 
0.797 
MSI 
0.016 
0.858 
МВТ 
MS2 
MS3 
0.015 
0.014 
5.184 
0.881 
0.823 
80.757 
MS4 
0.001 
0.868 
Table 1. Quantitative evaluation results of Quickbird 
(c) 
Figure 4. The fusion results of Quickbird. (a) RGB false- 
colour composition 4, 3 and 2 of SFIM. (b) RGB false-colour 
composition 4, 3 and 2 of DWT. (c) RGB false-colour 
composition 4, 3 and 2 of МВТ 
Visual evaluation is subjective and nor comprehensive. The 
evaluation result of fused images with quantitative calculation 
is a comprehensive evaluation. First, we compare the spectral 
quality evaluation indexes SD and spectral ERG AS from Table 
1. The index SD values of SFIM-fused images are the lowest. 
The spectral ERGAS and average SD values of three fusion 
methods are 1.070 and 0.003 (SFIM), 4.260 and 0.009 (DWT), 
5.184 and 0.012 (МВТ), respectively. So, both spectral ERGAS 
and average SD indexes of SFIM-fused images are more close 
to zero compared with DWT or МВТ. In other words, SFIM 
fusion method has optimal spectral information preservation 
with LSR images of Quickbird, followed by DWT and МВТ. 
Then, we analyse the spatial quality evaluation indexes CC and 
spatial ERGAS. The value of CC index between either band 
MBT-fused images with HSR image is the highest. The average 
values of CC index of three fusion methods are 0.729 (SFIM), 
0.676 (DWT), 0.858 (МВТ), and the spatial ERGAS indexes of 
three fusion methods are 82.535 (SFIM), 85.518 (DBT) and 
80.757 (МВТ), respectively. So, the average CC index value of 
МВТ fusion method is the highest among the three fusion 
methods and the spatial ERDAS index value of МВТ is the 
lowest. Thus, МВТ fusion method has the highest spatial 
information preservation with HSR image of Quickbird among